A / N: End of chapter hint, Musashi is listed as a character. I wonder why.
Chapter 5
A feast was being held in Wales after countless battles won, it, the north, and surrounding lands finally free of the larger bands of invaders. A second Pentecost, hosted by King Leodegrance, another lord loyal to Uther and once Vortigern before him. More notably, the one who commissioned and gifted the large, circular table that was to be the Table of the Round and his daughter, Guinevere, later to be her wife. Both were generously received, though she remembered how defiant the girl was when her father first introduced them. The youthful beauty, princess raven-haired. A personality more mighty than the Usurper himself in all his black misery. An intelligent radiance, queen unmatched, harboring stubbornness seeded deep within her bones. Her accompanying temper, white-hot. Like a winged terror—lovely Medusa, monster reborn—hovering above court and country all, taking no captives, only blood for blood, blow for blow, and just punishment or fair compromise. The girl everyone desired. The woman none deserved, and deserved no one. The elder who loved everyone and nobody just the same, bearing the blame.
… Camelot's fall. It hadn't been her fault. It hadn't been Lancelot's fault either. Or Mordred's. Nor Morgana's. Uther's. Merlin's. No, it'd been hers alone. She was responsible, the cause and effect. She knew that better than anyone, and arms hanging over the battlements, Britain stretched out before her in the dark, swirling mists and fogs and approaching rains foreshadowing the beginning of the beginning. The only battle before that fateful day upon that hill where defeat was high. The rousing of the Serpent King, White Dragon, void manifested mortality, and the decimation of many famous knights of old and birth of legends anew. Vortigern. Slayer, deceiver, black tyranny incarnate.
If there were any capable of helping her decipher this World she'd created, of the British Isles that was unlike the one she'd known, it would be he. Merlin was of no help, Morgana too young. Only, he was Vortigern and waking him from his slumber would certainly be the death of her. Consumed by fire, or vaporized by lightning. Ripped in half, eaten alive. A number of ways to die, but, she had to risk it. Hope he would recognize her though not golden-haired. She had to try…
Seated in the main hall with the rest of the ladies and lords of the court on one side, knights and retainers and other lesser comers and goers on the other, she wouldn't make the journey alone as she was—it was too perilous. Rot and disease and rogues and waylayers were rampant still. There was yet no Knights of the Round Table to see her safely away, no Robinhood to watch her passage, no holy sword and sheath to keep the darkness at bay. Monsters and beasts, child-eaters and man-flayers, roamed the countryside and deep forests right beside the road. No, not a girl of her delicate delicacy. Not this girl who'd never swung a sword in her life, this soft body raised with love and care though required to help when and where appropriate. She would need a protector, a knight to guide her way.
She would've felt insulted, but, now wasn't the time, and her time was short. After this feast, her other self would ride out and clean up the last of the invaders, then have to deal with her first war. The kings in attendance here; many didn't agree with the idea that their king was hardly older than a child. Only months since pulling Caliburn, it'd taken her several years to earn their respect—and that was only after beating the eleven most outspoken ones into submission, chief among them being Lot her uncle-in-law. In that war old legends would die and new ones be born, she would lose Caliburn and be granted Excalibur in its place, then unveil her holy sword's golden blade, its blinding light roaring across the battlefield for the first time. That war would be soon. She had to reach Vortigern before it started. Before those dark waves crashed upon her beloved Britain's shores.